Janssen Vows to Make Up for Hickey Severance Pay

Moving to defuse a growing labor and financial problem, county Chief Administrative Officer David Janssen said Wednesday he will recoup a controversial $67,500 severance payment to his predecessor through continued vacancies and budget cuts in his office.

Janssen’s announcement was designed to quell growing resentment among hundreds of county employees who have complained that recently retired CAO Norman Hickey was awarded the hefty payment at the same time they are being asked to take a week off without pay to help solve the county’s fiscal crisis.

Some of the callers to county supervisors’ offices and union leadership have promised to rescind their promises of voluntary work furloughs because of the payment to Hickey, approved April 7 as he stepped down and Janssen was appointed to the post.

“Our members are very upset and they’re very concerned,” said Eliseo Medina, leader of the labor union which represents 10,000 county employees. Medina said his office has fielded hundreds of calls since Hickey’s severance package was made public. Supervisors’ offices have also received dozens of phone calls.

“We’re being told that we’re in a budget crisis, that we have to help pull it together by VTO (voluntary time off) and working with fewer people and by working together the best we can,” Medina said. “And then, in the middle of this, we get hit with this announcement that Mr. Hickey gets $68,000 severance.”

As of April 2, time off without pay taken by workers has saved the county $2.5 million, a county spokeswoman said. Workers have so far pledged to take $3.5 million worth of unpaid leave.

Janssen said he would keep his former post of assistant chief administrative officer vacant at least until August and make more cuts in his department to make up the $67,500 Hickey will receive over the next six months.

“I am going to hold my position vacant so that the revenue stream can be used and we do not have to use VTO (voluntary time off funds) to pay for” Hickey’s severance, Janssen said.

For “any additional payments needed to cover it, we’ll make cuts” in the CAO’s office budget, he added.

Janssen earned $117,000 as assistant chief administrative officer. That post would have to remain vacant for more than six months to make up the cost of the payment to Hickey.

Janssen would not commit himself to keeping the office vacant for that long, but said he would make more cuts if necessary. Even before word of Hickey’s severance payment surfaced, Janssen said he intended to cut $800,000 to $1 million from the CAO’s $8 million budget next year.

With the county work force operating under a total hiring freeze, Janssen would have to grant himself an exemption to fill the post, a politically risky proposition at a time when thousands of county employees are being asked to do extra work to cover for vacant positions.

County supervisors offered a variety of justifications for the payment to Hickey, 64, who left office to take the top administrative post in St. Petersburg, Fla., after the board refused to meet his demands for unusual contract terms that would allow him to qualify for the county’s pension program. He starts in St. Petersburg May 4.

The supervisors met in closed session with Hickey March 26 and unanimously offered him two options. He could remain at the county accepting a two-year contract at his 1991 salary of nearly $135,000, a pact that would not include the retirement benefits Hickey desired. Or he could take a severance payment of six months salary to leave.

But, when Hickey then won the job in St. Petersburg and returned to claim his severance payment anyway, some of the supervisors were startled.

“We didn’t define it clearly that, if he got the job, he wouldn’t get the six months severance,” Supervisor John MacDonald said. “That was assumed, but it was never clearly stated or written.”

“I think it is wrong,” Supervisor Susan Golding said, adding that “I argued it ferociously. You offer severance when you’re firing someone or you’re terminating someone and they have no place to go.”

But, because of their oral offer to Hickey on March 26, the supervisors had executed a binding contract and were required to pay Hickey, according to advice they said they received from County Counsel Lloyd Harmon. Harmon did not return several telephone calls to his office Wednesday.

The supervisors said they felt morally bound to offer the payment to Hickey, who had been working for the county on a handshake agreement while his new contract was debated, because Hickey’s expired agreement included the clause.

“The six months severance was in the original (contract),” Supervisor Brian Bilbray said. “We used that as the basis for the offer to opt out.” He contended that the board is bound to honor its obligations to Hickey just as it is bound to pay rank-and-file workers their 1991 raise despite the hard times.

“My personal view is that I would honor a contract whether it was oral or written,” Supervisor Leon Williams said. “I wouldn’t have done it if I felt it was the wrong thing to do.”

Bilbray argued that, by ending its relationship with Hickey and promoting Janssen, the board will quickly save far more than the severance payment, because Janssen is willing to make personnel cuts that Hickey has resisted.

“The fact is that, by making a clean cut, we can save over $1 million in one department,” Bilbray said. “That savings in itself gives me one heck of a reason to make a clean cut and start with a new administration and move on.”

But MacDonald acknowledged that the timing of the events leaves county workers with a reason to question the payments.

“I’m sorry the staff feels that way,” he said. “They have a legitimate right to feel that way, but I’m sorry that this thing has kind of exploded in a way that is a very emotional one.”